yet another newbuild drillship and semisub ordered

[c.captain]

From Maritime Executive Magazine here

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

In a statement released today, South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. says they’ve received a $1.1 billion order for one drill ship and one semi-submersible rig.

The world’s second biggest shipyard also said the rig was ordered by a company in the Americas, but did not specify any further.

The project is expected to be complete and delivered by August 31, 2013

My GOD! How many of these are going to be built? Any who is this mystery buyer? I am beginning to think there is some inside industry knowledge that the demand for offshore is going to explode and that can only be for some monumental reason which is that the projected supply of crude is going south very soon and the oil majors are going to use anything they can put their hands on to drill anywhere they might find anything! What else can it be?

[mainecheng]

No I personally think it's more to do with emissions regulations....
as far as the Return on investment for a Ultra Deep Water Drill Ship vs retrofitting? this new ships are fetching between 500K and 680K PER DAY.
Means you pay off a 700 MM $ ship in under 3 years. When it takes a year to or more to retrofit + hundreds of Millions of dollars its economics plain and simple. Not to mention the ability to drill in 12K feet of water where there is the most un tapped oil reserves (projected) Next look for a slew of ice strengthened Drill Ships.

[c.captain]

Now Pride (which is for sale btw) orders another to add to the four they already have enroute to their fleet.

Read about it here

btw, you may well be right mainecheng about the economics of a company going with a newbuild vs. rebuilding something old yet the drilling companies are still going ahead with those refits along with the new ship/rigs ordered and more imporantly, the oil companies keep contracting these old rigs at high dayrates. I have always believed that anything more that 20 years old should be scrapped but as long as old rigs can find work those rigs aren't going anywhere fast.